


Like The Ache Of Life

by CalamityK



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, IDk what to even tag this as, M/M, Most of the characters are just mentioned, Painter!Victor, Smut, THIS IS A REWRITE OF AN OLD FIC OF MINE FROM ANOTHER FANDOM, VictUuri, Victor POV, WOWOWOW!, artistic and indirect smut though so not explicit, hes still a skater and a coach tho, i just like the idea that he paints, i wrote a yuri on ice fic, im so tired, mostly because i couldn't pass up the chance to make this Victor, victor and yuuri are the main ones duh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8876701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityK/pseuds/CalamityK
Summary: Victor lives a life of aching limbs, high spins, and blades against ice.He’s trapped.--------Or that one fic that's not as angsty as the description makes it sound, and where two boys fall in love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pumpkinpiechey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinpiechey/gifts).



> Hiiiiiiiiii. So this is 100% unbeta'd oops. It's 3am in hell (where i live) and i don't have the patience to wait to post this.  
>   
> This is my first Yuri!! On Ice fic yay!  
> This is also a rewrite of a fic i wrote for a different fandom that is posted on here called "Life Can Be Felt". It's a fic i held very close to my heart. I could not resist the urge to rewrite it because Victor struck me as needing to be written the way this fic is written.  
>   
> I will probably edit this fic at a later date, maybe add some details or fix some that aren't flowing.  
> BUT HERE IT IS IN ALL IT'S TRASH GLORY.

Victor lives a life of aching limbs, high spins, and blades against ice.

_He’s trapped._

\----------

Life to him, is nothing but an inhale and an exhale; long practices and grueling routines. Then the screams of fans being drowned out by glasses of vodka, seedy clubs, and the hard hands of strangers.

Victor’s nights and days are a precarious balance. His mornings spent against the ice, pounding his soul out into it. His nights spent in booths surrounded by smoke, nested in the back of bars; praying no one knows him, or that if they do they’ll offer something more than just praise.

Victor rarely goes home disappointed.

He’s been told it’s his eyes, or the determined set of his shoulders; perhaps the way his silver hair falls gracefully over his face. But mostly he’s told it’s his eyes. People get pulled into the blue like the waves of a riptide.

Truthfully, he’s never cared what part of him appeals most to anyone, just as long as he gets satisfied. _He’s never truly satisfied._ He’s never truly sober. The older he gets the more the blood in his veins feels like acrid liquor, but at least it doesn’t freeze on the ice.

This is just how life is.

\------------

Victor wanted to be an artist once. The faded murals around his home rink remind him of that. He’d had some talent for painting vivid pictures, but somehow it all landed on ice instead of canvas.

He once dreamed of painting the sky at its every stage from dawn until dusk. He remembers waking up and trying to skate that dream. It wasn’t the same.

Georgi slips onto the bench beside him. Hands Victor a thermos of whatever he’s brought from home. He doesn’t smile; he doesn’t ask why Victor missed a jump this morning and is favoring his thighs. He doesn’t pry.

Just like Victor doesn’t ask Georgi why his eyes are rimmed red, or why he hasn’t mentioned Anya in a week. That’s the kind of friends they are.

He wonders if this is all their lives will ever be, bruises and aches from too many bad decisions and attempts at chasing gold.

He wonders if they’ll ever truly be happy.

\---------------

Victor’s months stay filled with competitions; bright smiles faked for the sake of choreography. He longs for a day when he and his rink mates give real ones; eyes crinkled at the corners and soft chuckles deep in their chests.

He comes out of a jump facing the judges and immediately plasters on a smile. He can see Yakov in the corners of his vision.

His coach that never smiles; says there’s just too much to be serious about.

Yakov’s almost too good as a coach. Shifting around narrow eyed barking critiques, and passing out judgement with stern looks and steady hands. His only goal: _to improve_. Occasionally he makes the younger ones cry, but he always gets away with it. Soon they won’t have as many emotions about failed jumps.

Victor thinks that’s the side effect of good training.

Who cares how many times the ice hurts you when the ice is all you have.

\-------------

The season hasn’t even ended when Georgi tells him he plans to win Anya back _next_ season. His eyes are bright again as he waxes poetry about the milk chocolate curls that fall around her face, and about her eyes that are green like springtime.

It’s not like Victor has never seen her, but he listens anyway.

Victor watches Georgi’s thumbs twitch as he describes music and step sequences that will prove his longing; his heartbreak. Then he switches back to the poetry, describing her voice like honey or satin or the right amount of sugar in tea.

Georgi smiles and his eyes crinkle at the corners.

Victor watches him fall in love with his own ideas.

He wishes him the best, truly he does.

\--------------

The air outside is colder than in the rink, but sweat rolls down Victor’s forehead. The loud bass of some song thumps its way through the cold night air, hitting brick walls and echoing around the alley.

It’s nothing more than background noise for him and another stranger with cold eyes and warm hands. Hands that roam and cup and demand without recognition. They promise another night of liquor flavored lust and a haze of self-loathing at dawn.

Victor takes that promise just for the chance to not be… _Victor_.

Right now, life is nothing but a shot of vodka, backs pressed against cold stones, and the sharp gasps of the only pleasure he knows how to feel.

On the ice, he skates like he’s not afraid to die.

Sometimes, he isn’t.

_He’s trapped._

_\--------------_

After the final is when Victor’s whole world stops moving.

He sees the boy at the banquet. He’s all wiry muscle and kind eyes. _Brown eyes_ , he never thought that color could be beautiful, but he stares into big round pools of wet terracotta clay. They’re the most picturesque mudslide, and Victor is going under. His breath caught in his lungs, burning and igniting as he wonders what this feeling is, he’s never felt it.

He can’t find words as the boy grabs onto a pole. It should be ridiculous with Giacometti on it too, but Victor is entranced. He asks the guy’s name from someone nearby and they tell him.

Yuuri. _Katsuki Yuuri_. A soft name to match the soft drunken smile.

Yuuri drags him onto the floor, switching between Japanese and English words that Victor can still barely understand.

He’s too distracted anyway.

Victor’s fingers itch to paint for the first time in a long time. They itch to paint a perfectly arched back, legs that climb and bend the way only a skater’s can, and soft thin lips that are just barely pink.

Victor wishes he could paint the invisible spark flowing from his own body to the smaller one clinging to it.

Then, Yuuri says Victor’s name with a ‘will you be my coach’ attached to it.

Victor wonders if life can be felt instead of just lived.

\------------

It’s months before Victor sees Yuuri again.

All it takes is one viral video, the memory of a drunken promise, and a plane ticket. Then Victor’s leaving his ice for someone else’s.

Yakov says he can never come back. What he finds in Hasetsu makes him never want to.

Yuuri skates like he’s breaking, all fragile spins and steps made of glass.

Victor vows to show him what he’s capable of, make him skate programs of heat, sex and iron. But he’ll let Yuuri keep his emotions.

He’s no Yakov, he doesn’t wish to be.

Every time Yuuri improves Victor’s chest twists and his stomach flutters.

He feels like maybe things _can_ change, if you use enough effort.

\------------

They have stuff in common; on and off the ice. They like the same movies, love dogs, and sometimes they skate just to prove they’re still breathing.

Yuuri reminds Victor of the way life used to be, back when the ice still felt like magic.

His innocence breathes new life into the day to day of competition, and Victor wonders if this is what life is supposed to feel like. He wonders if this is what it means to have a purpose.

He slides a steaming bowl of noodles across to Yuuri wearing a smile that finally meets his eyes. He stills it though, it’s too soon. Yuuri sits down and carries on with a story about how he got into skating. Victor listens and hums in earnest when he needs to respond.

Something about Yuuri is kind of perfect.

Everything about Victor is kind of _not_.

\------------

Victor’s nights are now filled with the solid walls of the bathhouse, plans for Yuuri to win gold medals, and the feeling of something inside him changing.

His days are filled with skating still, but now those turns around the rink are laced with warm brown eyes, playful banter and real smiles.

_He’s a little less trapped, he thinks._

_\---------------_

It’s after the first competition when Victor tells Yuuri about his old dreams of painting. He’s trying to convey how he used those dreams to make stories on the ice.

Yuuri asks if he ever tried to paint. Victor confesses that he can, but hasn’t since he was sixteen.

When Yuuri shows up at his room that night with a shy smile, a set of colors, and a few brushes, Victor feels again what he first felt.

He asks Yuuri to model for him. The answering nod feels like relief.

Victor gets lost looking at smooth black hair, and the sharp curve of Yuuri’s shoulders where his sweater droops. He can barely hold his brush. He _can’t_ hold his focus.

Life is nothing but a few hours of stiff poses, pastel flesh colored paints, the sharp black frames of glasses over sleepy eyes.

There’s a strange tension when Victor finishes, and simply gazes at Yuuri lying neatly on his sheets.

 The tension heats a bit when Yuuri gazes right back.

\------------

The tension finally snaps at the Cup of China. It snaps with the blinding press of Victor’s lips upon Yuuri’s after the free skate; the wet feel of tongue against tongue as they tumble to the ice as one. It’s brief and not nearly enough.

It becomes enough that night, with the slick slide of skin against skin after a long overdue conversation. The sweat trapped between them feels different than it’s ever felt.

Yuuri is a red-hot heat for Victor, where countless strangers were a distant blue chill. Yuuri is a successful spin on the ice, a jump that’s too high yet executed perfectly, and sunlight through the high windows of a brand-new rink, _all at once_.

Yuuri is suddenly life, and life is nothing but the brightest burning flame of a thousand stars; a name whispered into skin, and the feel of hands that are slow and careful.

Victor decides the bitter taste of vodka is infinitely less addicting than the taste of Yuuri’s lips.

\-----------

Victor finds himself staring at the ocean through the fingers of his right hand. There’s a ring on it that’s brighter than even Barcelona’s sun.

He thinks of the matching one on Yuuri’s hand, and a smile finally reaches for the corner of his eyes.

Victor can have days of fresh plans and new skates that bleed into nights of drying paint and falling asleep with his hand clasped firmly in Yuuri’s.

He no longer resents the ice.

_He’s free._

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [kingplitsetsky](kingplitsetsky.tumblr.com)  
> I do appreciate hearing that you've read/enjoyed/hated this. It encourages me to make more.


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